


The sum of my faults and bad decisions

by therune



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 04:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therune/pseuds/therune
Summary: In Stilton's Manor Corvo observes Delilah's ritual. Beside him, Daud is white as a ghost. What follows is a conversation about regret, redemption and how the Empress was different.





	The sum of my faults and bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant for "Retirement" - the cracky fun fic about Daud, the troll player and Corvo, the sneak master. How it got to this....I have no idea myself. I started to write about Daud incapacitating people with a piece of piano wire, suddenly it was 2 hours later and this happened. Daud is the weirdest muse.

It's bizarre to say the least, and Corvo is a man who can possess rats, make a burst of wind cut through doors and vanish then reappear a few meters away. They're watching ghosts, for the lack of a better word. It's like two times are happening at once. 

He's on the floor, watching the gruesome thing that holds Delilah's spirit and makes her immortal. If the Duke is supposed to keep it safe, it would be at his mansion.

Daud is perched on the railing above like a gargoyle, silently watching. Corvo doesn't think he has moved once in the past 10 minutes. If it has been 10 minutes... it's hard to tell. Usually he has a good grasp on the flow of time, but in here... 

The loop starts anew; Grim Alex, Jindosh, Ashworth and Luca take their places. Delilah appears from the Void. Just how powerful has she become? She can sense their presence....three years before they arrived. 

“I know who you are... I know when you are,” she threatens them. “You've come to watch me return. You failed once already, you will fail again. And some day, I'll come for you.”  
They flicker out of existence, and the ritual begins again. 

Corvo walks up the stairs with newfound determination. Once he finds and destroys the hideous sculpture, Delilah will be mortal again. She can be stopped. He watches Daud staring at Delilah. Stumbling over the old assassin wasn't as coincidental as he had claimed, not after the Outsider giving him a hint at the last shrine. “The years pass, and what you thought you knew fades. Emily is waiting for you and there is only one person who knows how to kill an Empress and how to save one.” Daud – hair gone silver, eyes sharp as a knife – hadn't looked surprised either to see him, merely resigned. “Tell me what you need,” had been his first words to Corvo and not many more had followed. Corvo is glad for the silence. Daud follows his orders without questions, is unobtrusive and Corvo often wonders what the Outsider must have said to him, what makes him stay. Daud reminds him of a pet these days, of a hound obeying its master, with the way Daud does what he's told and never tells Corvo 'no'. 

“We should go. We've done all we can here,” Corvo begins and turns to leave. But this is the first command Daud hasn't followed. He stays where he is and Corvo is unnerved. He turns back to look at Daud and there's something in the line of his body that is deeply troubling. 

“It's all my fault,” Daud admits in a flat voice, “I broke the world. I broke the Void. Delilah's here because of me. I failed.”

This conversation is long overdue. Corvo thought that they'd both either postpone it for after they had restored the Empire or never speak of it. He hasn't forgiven Daud, how could he? He spared him mostly because he didn't have the time to deal with a horde of supernatural assassins on top of a conspiracy following a conspiracy. Corvo has grown wise enough – he hopes – to admit that Daud – murderer – was another pawn in Burrows' plan, albeit a pawn who killed the queen. The assassination would have probably happened without his involvement anyway, so many chances for Burrows, Campbell and their ilk to act. That doesn't make him innocent or blameless, but at least Daud had shown regret, guilt and turned over a new leaf, leaving his blade at Jessamine's grave and left Dunwall for good. 

Their partnership now is born out of opportunity. Daud will never tell him 'no'. Corvo doesn't like the man, but the intense hate he felt has faded into the background. He can put their past behind him for now, for as long as he has a mission. What he'd do with Daud after Emily has been saved... that's a thought for another day. 

“Delilah claims to be Jessamine's older half-sister. She would have attempted a coup, with or without your involvement,” he tries to get Daud to move. And he's probably right, he realizes. Delilah is power hungry, marked and convinced that the world owes her. 

“No. The Void... it's my fault. I sent her there.”

Corvo's blood runs cold. And to think he had actually believed his story about a clean cut, retirement and new life.  
“Tell me,” he demands.

“You won't believe me,” Daud sighs, resigned, watching the ritual start up again.

“I've seen a hundred impossible things today, try me,” Corvo dares him.

“I've met Delilah 15 years ago. The Outsider gave me her name, said it was a gift to me, a mystery. Bastard knows I hate mysteries. It was after...after,” he can't bring himself to say it, “and I followed the Outsider's lead. I found Delilah and her coven. She was planning a coup back then, only... worse.”

“She manipulated an empire for years, stole my daughter's throne, imprisoned her in stone and you dare to speak to me about 'worse'?!” Corvo yells. The old rage is still there, only buried, never gone, he is furious. Jessamine's death hurts like it had all that time ago. The pain of losing her, of being imprisoned, tortured and kept away from Emily crashes over him again. 

Daud doesn't even react, as if he had been expecting Corvo's outrage.

“She can do...things with her paintings. Statues. Make them alive. And she can influence what she paints.”

Corvo remembers the statue in the conservatory. It had been ....not really alive, animated seems a better word.

“She was painting Emily. She had planned to... switch their minds. Become Emily,” Daud whispers his confession, “and I stopped her. I removed Emily's portrait from the ritual, replaced it with one from the void. Like it was before, do you remember? Light, blue, more like the sea instead of the night and darkness it became?”

“Delilah entered the void? Because you banished her?”

Daud nods. “I should have just stabbed her. Put an end to all this and then me after. None of this would have happened. But I couldn't.... not after her. I never took another life, I laid down my sword at her grave and swore I would stop. And so, I broke the void. I broke the empire. Your girl is cursed because of me. I wish I could take it all back.”

Corvo is reminded of Stilton, of the broken shell whispering mad nonsense and of the regretful man in the gardens. Why has the Outsider granted Stilton another chance? Why not Daud? What would Corvo give to go back? To use this timepiece, travel back 15 years, stop Daud, stop Delilah and stop the conspiracy before it even began... 

Daud seems to have heard him, or his thoughts have been circling around the same issue. The time piece, the time piece, the chance of a life unlived.  
“He never gives gifts. Not without a price, and you've usually paid it before you realize. This timepiece is no different... he's taunting me with the sum of my faults and bad decisions. Stilton gets his life back, the district will likely improve, people will be safer... and I remain with my guilt, powerless to stop my life.”

If Corvo could use this piece to fix everything...where would he even start? Stop the assassination, of course. But that wouldn't fix the conspiracy, that had been months in the making at that point. Stop Burrows importing those dreaded rats. Stop Burrows become Spymaster. Stop Delilah from being cast out? How would that have turned out? It's impossible, he realizes. 

“You're a pawn, Daud, not a king,” he says. 

That gets Daud to look at him. His eyes are rimmed with red, Corvo realizes with a start. He should explain himself better.

“Not killing is a good thing. Stopping Delilah is a good thing. Killing Jessamine was awful, but if you hadn't done it.... I think it could have happened anyway. We were surrounded by vipers and didn't even know it. If you hadn't... maybe I never would have discovered the conspiracy. Or conspiracies. Or the events that led to the cure never happened. Or Delilah would have taken over unnoticed. Or she would have taken over Jessamine.”

You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. You cannot save her. 

Maybe, that letter he found in the void, next to her body... it hadn't been a taunt. Maybe it had been the blunt truth. Maybe he couldn't have saved Jessamine, no matter what he'd done differently.  
But he can save Emily, and that's the thought that counts. That's the only thing that matters now. 

“Let's go,” he decides. Daud follows him and once again Corvo is reminded of a pet obeying its master. 

“We have to focus on the present, not the past, not what-ifs.”

They leave the study and enter a splendid mansion, bustling with light and life. Corvo clutches the timepiece tightly. As they leave, the world turns grey and suddenly the floor drops away and they fall. There's blackness and inside sharp edges. Someone grabs his arm and he hits black stone. It's the Void.  
And the Outsider, grabbing him and with his other hand, holding Daud as if he weighed nothing.  
“Hello, my old friend,” he greets him. “Daud.”

They're on a small island, for lack of a better word. There are no pieces of his life as he usually sees when he is transported into this dimension. There are statues of robed men and an altar. A ceremony?  
The Outsider explains how he became a god, how he was killed and made immortal at the same time. And how Delilah found this place and used it, twisted it.  
“Delilah is a part of me now. And I don't like it,” he finishes.  
Those black eyes fix on Daud. 

“Can I help to fix it?” Daud asks. There's something in his voice Corvo would call despair. 

“Don't you think you've helped enough? I gave you her name, all that time ago. Killing is the only thing you were ever good at, and the one time it would have been helpful, you don't do it.”

“I'm sorry,” Daud says softly, eyes fixed to the ground. There is something broken in Daud, Corvo realizes, and is surprised with how that makes him feel. Grim satisfaction is on the forefront of his mind. Jessamine's death hurt Corvo and Emily, but it also hurt her murderer. The Knife of Dunwall, legendary assassin is reduced to a man wallowing in guilt, so grateful for a chance at making things right (or at least a tiny bit better) that he abandons rational thought and self-preservation and begs for scraps at Corvo's feet. Then Corvo is surprised by how twisted those thoughts are, even to him. 

“You're being unfair,” Corvo interrupts and can't believe he's saying this. “He will answer for all that he has done, but he's not to blame for Delilah. You marked her, you saw that she was dangerous but instead of stopping her yourself, you sent Daud and gave him nothing but a name. If he didn't do what you would have wanted, you can't blame him for something he doesn't know about. You can blame him for the thing he's responsible for, as I know I do, but Delilah is not on him. If anything, she's on you. You gave her powers and now she's using them against you.” 

To his surprise, the Outsider doesn't turn on Corvo. Corvo had expected outrage. Fury, godlike powers, his imminent death. Instead, the Outsider seems pleased somehow. As if Corvo did exactly what he wanted. 

“I think Corvo is right. For all of this to happen as it is happening, we all need to play our part. If not for Daud, you wouldn't have my mark. If not for Daud, Delilah would sit on Dunwall's throne inside the body of Emily Kaldwin. If not for Corvo, the plague would have destroyed the empire. If not for Delilah, the Void wouldn't bleed time into Aramis Stilton's manor. And if not for the rift in time...well... you will see, eventually, as will I.”

There's a blinding light, and they're both back in the dust district. Daud is shaking, pale as a ghost. 

“Did you mean that?” he asks in a small voice that seems so unlike him Corvo feels a thread of fear. It's not the first time he has thought about putting a blade to Daud's throat, but for once he wonders if Daud would stop him. If Daud would ask for it. If he would slice his own throat on Corvo's blade and bleed out at his feet. 

“Delilah's not your fault. You saved Emily back when I didn't even know she was in danger. You have your faults, lots of them, but you did some good things, too. Maybe the good outweighs the bad. Maybe it doesn't. And even that is the case, that still doesn't mean you should stop doing it. You're saving my daughter twice now, helping to restore an empire. That counts for something.”

They walk towards the skiff. Sokolov's complaining about odd aches and pains and Megan teases him good naturedly. She's smoking and it takes Corvo a few moments to notice it. She's holding the cigar in her other hand. She has two arms now, two eyes. The lines on her face have lessened. The time piece has changed her, fundamentally it seems, and she doesn't even know it. 

She drops the cigar when she takes a closer look at Daud who's looking as if he's seeing a ghost.  
Corvo claps him on his shoulder.  
“You did good,” he says before joining Sokolov in the skiff. 

Megan grabs Daud's jacket and holds on, looking as if she fears Daud might collapse. It's not far off.  
They talk softly, mostly just murmurs, too quiet to make out individual words.  
She draws him into an embrace eventually. He doesn't resist, doesn't return it either, stands still like a puppet.


End file.
